Westminster View - Choice should not be feared by a confident argument
Those dismissive words from former Prime Minister Theresa May - “Now is not the time” – have become a repeated flicker of Westminster’s response to Scotland’s democratic aspirations, writes Lara Bird MP.
They have appeared in different forms to avoid answering one fundamental question: who should decide Scotland’s future?
Andy Burnham’s latest dismissal of a second independence referendum is simply the newest version of an argument heard many times before. Since 2016, Scotland has watched Prime Ministers come and go, each arriving with promises of renewal, stability, or transformation. But for Scotland, the answer is always the same.
The problem has never simply been the person occupying the office. It is the distance between the decisions made in Westminster and the lives affected by them.
If Westminster politicians are confident in their case, they should be willing to make it to the Scottish people.
Instead, we are told that the question itself should not be asked.
If the answer is Westminster, let me stop you right there. The Westminster system was built around the concentration of power, placing decisions far away from the people who live with the consequences. It is a system that has repeatedly promised change while protecting the structures that keep power concentrated in the hands of the few.
Replacing one Prime Minister with another may change the occupant of Downing Street, but it will not, by itself, lower household bills, unlock Scotland’s energy potential or tackle the long-term challenges holding our country back. Each Prime Minister has eventually become another passing chapter in a political system struggling to address the very issues it claimed it could solve.
Scotland deserves more than another change of face. More than another promise that the time for change will come later. More than another generation being asked to wait patiently while decisions about its future are made elsewhere.
It deserves the power to choose its own future. That choice should not be feared by those who believe in their argument. It should be welcomed. And it should be trusted by those who believe in democracy.